thing to him.[7]

_23rd April, 1866._--When we marched this morning we passed the spot
where an animal had been burned in the fire, and on enquiry I found
that it is the custom when a leopard is killed to take off the skin
and consume the carcase thus, because the Makonde do not eat it. The
reason they gave for not eating flesh which is freely eaten by other
tribes, is that the leopard devours men; this shows the opposite of an
inclination to cannibalism.

All the rocks we had seen showed that the plateau consists of grey
sandstone, capped by a ferruginous sandy conglomerate. We now came to
blocks of silicified wood lying on the surface; it is so like recent
wood, that no one who has not handled it would conceive it to be
stone and not wood: the outer surface preserves the grain or woody
fibre, the inner is generally silica.

Buffaloes bitten by tsetse again show no bad effects from it: one mule
is, however, dull and out of health; I thought that this might be the
effect of the bite till I found that his back was so strained that he
could not stoop to drink, and could only eat the tops of the grasses.
An ox would have been ill in two days after the biting on the 7th.

A carrier stole a shirt, and went off unsuspected; when the loss was
ascertained, the man's companions tracked him with Ben Ali by night,
got him in his hut, and then collected the headmen of the village, who
fined him about four times the value of what had been stolen. They
came back in the morning without seeming to think that they had done
aught to be commended; this was the only case of theft we had noticed,
and the treatment showed a natural sense of justice.

_24th April, 1866._--We had showers occasionally, but at night all the
men were under cover of screens. The fevers were speedily cured; no
day was lost by sickness, but we could not march more than a few
miles, owing to the slowness of the sepoys; they are a heavy drag on
us, and of no possible use, except when acting as sentries at night.

When in the way between Kendany and Rovuma, I observed a plant here,
called _Mandare_, the root of which is in taste and appearance like a
waxy potato; I saw it once before at the falls below the Barotse
Valley, in the middle of the continent; it had been brought there by
an emigrant, who led out the water for irrigation, and it still
maintained its place in the soil. Would this not prove valuable in the
soil of India? I find that it is not cultivated f